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Just as a postscript to the Martha Coakley lawsuit (which I’ll have more on in a bit), it was supposed to be her failure to beat Scott Brown that ruined the Democratic Party for generations. As it turned out, she’s doing her job as a public servant, and Brown could have a short-lived Senate career, with a very attractive replacement. Elizabeth Warren has taken the lead in the closely watched US Senate race, according to a new poll out of UMass-Amherst.
Warren leads Brown by 4 points among registered voters in the UMass Amherst Poll, 43 percent to 39 percent, the difference being within the 4.4 percent margin of error, say UMass Amherst political scientists Brian Schaffner and Ray La Raja. The poll finds Warren is drawing strong support from women, middle-to-low income residents and younger voters. Brown maintains a large lead among Independent voters while Warren is getting overwhelming support from Democratic voters in Massachusetts.
“These numbers could mean trouble for Scott Brown,” Schaffner says. “The race is a dead heat and his support is well under 50 percent, which usually means difficulty for an incumbent, especially this far out from Election Day.”
In fact, his support in this poll is under 40%, which is nearly fatal. Warren will also have the benefit of a Presidential election year, which will boost turnout.
Warren’s success and the enthusiasm around her campaign has knocked every potential challenger in the Democratic primary out of the race. She has the ability to stay competitive with the Wall Street-backed Brown in fundraising, and the attacks put forward by the likes of Karl Rove have been laughable. Warren is still a neophyte candidate and a lot can go wrong; she probably needs to improve among independents, and you could see some gaffes and distortions of her record coming into play. But at the moment, she is well-positioned to enter the Senate.
At this point, come 2013 I’d rather have Martha Coakley and Elizabeth Warren taking it to the banking industry than Coakley in the Senate and someone who may not have the same perspective on foreclosure fraud in the Attorney General’s chair.
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I thought we fixed the banking industry … oh wait …
Warren looks good so far. Now let’s get rid of Kerry. Clear out all the losers.
Hope springs eternal. Love your bright outlook David, but I don’t see warren sticking it to the bankers. sure I expect a lot of talk, she is good at it, but with a bought and paid for congress I don’t see her doing much beyond talking.
P.S., Scott Brown didn’t beat Coakley, Obama did. She was a weak centrist but would have cruised anyway except that Obama’s mask had already slipped by election date.
Right. Assuming Barry wins, she’ll do exactly as she’s told. Especially because the Senate will likely be Republican.
You’re spot on I’m afraid. But Man don’t you hate that!
Apparently an example of a well known, but little understood phenomenon: It’s really hard to move a rock when you’re standing on it.
Warren is far from a neophyte, she is a Harvard professor and she has been grilled by Congress. She has been tested by the best and the most vicious Republicans have to offer, I doubt we have to worry that she’ll make any gaffes.
The Republicans are committing suicide and the Senate will most likely remain Democratic and regaining control of the House is a distinct possibility.
the Republican/Tea Party Axis ran on “jobs jobs jobs” and then did nothing on that front, instead they went back to the culture wars. Most voters are not Foxbot Teahadists and they are not happy with how the Republicans have done nothing but obstruct.
Hope you’re right. Twice as many D seats up for re-election than R seats, I think.
How does a dimwit like Scott Brown get near 40% approval? Too many fascists in this country?
Ah, RaggMopp, the proverbial place … “between”. How do you chose between getting down to it and moving the hard rock or climbing upon it and complaining about how hard it is to “move” the damned thing?
Especially if the current political “system” of “representative” democracy(yeah, right!) cannot be changed because those who control it, the political class, which includes the media, do NOT want the “system” to change, liking it just the lucrative way that it is … Really, do any of us imagine that Congress, which must agree to things like campaign finace “reform”, the end of the “revolving door”, and term-limits, will do so … unless every.single.incumbent.is.thrown.out … esentially, immediately?
If “the people” want, as OWS suggests that they do, actual participatory democracy … then “the people” are going to have to insist upon it. Seriously and really HARD. The people will have to ROCK the “systems” of THEIR society to the very foundations of the Rule of Law and the inalienable RIGHT of human beings to decide the nature of their own lives, and their own, collective civilised fate, as seems best and most wise to them.
Half-way measures, electing “better” dems, for example … to a body dominated by vested interests to whom virtually EVERY “better” dem will bow down, amounts to climbing down off the rock, saying, “Hmmm…” and then climbing back up on the rock and claiming to be able to see further into the future, in a “looking forwardy” kind of way.
Of course, we could simply put pretty ribbons on the rock and exclaim about how its looks have improved.
Time for a people’s Constitutional Convention … yet?
DW
It’s his body.
x2. Includes Liz.
Still?
In action would be better than still, I think. :-)
Hopefully your inevitable disappointment in a Sen. Warren won’t be too much for you.
Assuming she wins in MA, by the time Warren is ready to run for POTUS — say, 2016 — there will be nothing left of the social safety net.
problem here is the poll itself, it will galvanize and centralize money into the brown campaigh
To say that we need to elect “better” Democrats sets the bar so low that an ant could crawl under it.
Aren’t we supposed to go over the bar?
You always give us the truth to think about. Why would the PTB want anything to change? They steal with impunity and buy the government to enable them. Occupy everything.
Seriously, I would like to know what D Senators up for re-election will run on? The economy? HCR? FinReg? Austerity? Maybe killing OBL?
With numbers like these, look for the gloves to come off the Rethug smear machine and for this to get nasty (and I mean Lee Atwater nasty) real quick. The GOP would be freaking out no matter who was leading their porn boy, but my spidey sense tells me that Warren has cultivated a Clintonian level animosity in the Rethugs. The tipoff was Patrick Henry’s embarrassing and deplorable behavior toward her in the committee hearings. When closeted, toadie little pricks like Henry hear the big boys bad mouth someone in the backrooms they get emboldened to pile on and show their asses like he did.
For goodness sake, let’s get her elected before we write her off and abandon her. Maybe this will be the one time when someone feels the people so solidly behind her that she’ll be emboldened and show some guts. (And, yes, I know that’s what we thought about “with-friends-like-these-who-needs-enemies” Obama, but Christ what is there left to do.
In response to nusayler:
In terms of the electoral process, very little. I respect her and would have vastly preferred her to stay out of the Senate. I don’t think anyone can be effective there anymore. But YMMV.
I think that if Liz Warren doesn’t put some distance between herself and Barack Obama, she will have NO Senate career.
So far, I haven’t heard anyone ask her any tough questions. She’s our version of “Not Mitt”, only, it’s “Not Scott Brown”, instead.
Where does she stand on Afghanistan?
Is she on board with all of Obama’s saber-rattling at Iran?
Does she support the EU (with Obama’s strong support) shoving more “austerity” down the throats of the Greek people?
I feel like it’s okay to ask the questions of someone who was a republican until she was 46, and whom, just a couple of weeks ago, refused to answer when she was asked if she voted for Reagan.
I don’t want to write her off, I just don’t want to put another “bipartisan” sellout into the Senate. Does she think that Iraq was worth the cost, in blood and money?
Does she think that SS is broke and needs to be “fixed”?
Over…under…the point is that we don’t need to canonize anyone, especially, someone who most of her voting life, was a republican.
Substantive questions, please.
Twain is right to point out that too many democrats, even progressives, are into the relativist shit that is ruining us.
BTW, Coakley losing to Brown didn’t ruin the democratic party; it was an indication of just how disgusted are the voters with Obama and the democrats. As was losing that NY City seat that we’ve held for 90-odd years.
It aint rocket science; Barack Obama is a legless duck, frantically casting around for some way to recapture the support and clout that he’s so willfully squandered. To that end, he’s already playing the role of the honorable, hard-fighting underdog, as he bravely tries to get around the republican obstructionists. It’s a grotesque parody coming from a man who doubled his opponent’s electoral vote, and the voters are going to buy it even less than they did at the mid-terms.
Should have added a snark tag to my comment. Of course, Twain is correct. I was merely joking that setting the bar too low usually means that anyone can over it, rather than that no one (but an ant) can get under it.
LOL
x2, TB.
I was tryin’ to remember: Are we doin’ the limbo or the high-jump? :o)
Brown, of course, is just another pretty republican face…a kind of male Palin. But he’s not a complete idiot. If Obama’s numbers get into the mid-to-low 30′s (and I believe they will) unless Warren is moving left and away from Obama in no uncertain terms, Brown will hang him around her neck like a turd lei.
Good news, however, is welcome.
You be right about that, dude. But, even though he is one damn handsome guy (not to me og course, but in general) his election in a the “bluest state” there is practically, was a fluke. Democratsx should be able to take that one back. I think lots of Massacusettians realize they made a mistake.
Massachusettites????
oops, other than her age of conversion I voted for him twice. By the time he was lead out the door, I realized how duped I had been and the damage he had done.
It wasn’t until newt was in that I said “fuck this” and admitted how wrong I had been.
Turns out in retrospect my parents we RINOs as well, which is where I got it from. Their excuse was that my mother was essentially a confidant of J.Edgar and my dad retired with a White House security clearance. (You MUST talk conservative to hold those positions).
I imagine she scares the Democrats as much as the Republican. Wouldn’t be surprised if they sabotage her campaign.
If it’s the Limbo, it would be setting the bar too high. LOL
He is a nasty litte prick isn’t he.
True – the whisper campaign for a just don’t vote so as to get Obama off the “the liberals have no place to go so ignore them” nonsense (he is still on that idea sadly) resulted in 800,000 votes dropping out of the Dem column in a race won by the GOP by a 100,000 votes.
Warren is at 43% – I won’t feel safe until the polls show her over 50%, but a 5 point lead is nice.
Unless you’re from MA, you cannot begin to know how much Warren’s supporters want her to win. It’s not only because she would be good for our state and country but we are so incredibly pissed that such a shithole grabbed Ted Kennedy’s seat.
I am on Elizabeth Warren’s mailing list, and recently, the campaign emailed me, asking me to submit my idea for the first official campaign tee-shirt. I wrote:
GRASSROOTS SUPPORT + FANCY MANHATTAN FUNDRAISERS + ACCEPTING MONEY FROM PACs + ACCEPTING MONEY FROM CORPORATIONS AND LOBBYISTS = A BIG PROGRESSIVE VICTORY FOR ELIZABETH WARREN IN NOVEMBER!!